Rising Number of Men Don't Want to Work

A man works in the Moynihan Train Hall in Manhattan on July 28, 2022 in New York City. Men have been leaving the workforce at unprecedented rates, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

American men are opting out of the workforce at unforeseen rates.

For many, it’s not an issue of not being able to find a job. They have simply opted out altogether. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found only 89 percent of working age men have a job or are actively looking for work. In 1950, that number was at 97 percent.

While the early 1950s saw around 96 percent of working age American men between the ages of 25 and 54 working full or part-time jobs, that proportion has now moved to just 86 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And as fewer men financially support themselves, there are long-reaching economic and societal implications, experts say.

“The U.S. has a major issue of prime-age men giving up and permanently exiting the labor force,” Robin Brooks, a senior fellow policy research firm the Brookings Institution and the former chief economist at IIF, wrote on X, formerly Twitter this week.

“What’s striking about this is that it doesn’t get talked about at all, not in the mainstream media and not by economists, even though this obviously feeds political radicalization.”

What Caused The Drop?

Several factors may be at play for men’s declining participation in the workforce.

Recessions often bring down the workforce participation rate, and often the numbers never quite recover.

The 2008 Great Recession saw male employment decline from 88 to just 80.6 percent, and the rate has never been able to get higher than 86.7 percent since then. The pandemic saw a similar if not slightly different fate for men’s work. After dropping to 78 percent in 2020, male workforce participation has essentially recovered to pre-pandemic times now but still remains far below the times of the 1950s.

A larger factor may be men’s declining participation in higher education. While women historically were excluded from universities, they now outpace men at college roughly 60 to 40 percent.

And for those without a college degree, unemployment is far more likely. Those with only a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 3.9 percent compared to just 2.2 percent of those who achieved a bachelor’s degree, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston linked a drop in self esteem related to the jobs on the market as a possible factor.

The drop in men in the workforce has been largely concentrated among non-college educated men, and it’s these men who face a significant decline in earnings.

Over the timespan of 1980 and 2019, non-college-educated men’s median weekly earnings went down 17 percent after inflation, while college-educated men saw earnings rise by 20 percent.

“This finding suggests that deteriorating social status is a plausible key factor,” the Boston Fed paper said.

Of course, since 1950, there’s also been growth in the United States’ safety social net.

While 1960 saw only 455,000 workers on Social Security disability benefits, that had moved to 7.6 million people in 2022. Of that cohort, 1.3 million were men between the ages of 25 and 54.

“If the jobs don’t meet people’s needs, people can’t work,” Yvonne Vissing, a professor at Salem State University and an expert on the changing role of men in society, told Newsweek. “It’s not that they won’t work. They can’t, given the job options, locations, tasks, hours, pay, and environments that are available.”

Men have also been more likely to go to graduate school or be stay-at-home dads in recent years.

The shift in industry work available will also see men lose traction in the workforce, Vissing said.

Most factory or manufacturing jobs are gone in the United States, and while STEM remains a hot field, health, education and administration roles are increasing in importance, Vissing said. These jobs are often held by women.

Men also may be leaving the workforce due to a larger dissatisfaction with capitalist society, Vissing said.

“Many jobs are simply not satisfying,” Vissing said. “Working for others who get the benefit of our physical labor and intellectual property is not rewarding either emotionally or financially. People want to work doing jobs that matter to us. We want to use our creativity. We want to matter, and in many businesses, employees simply don’t get treated with the respect and support that we need and want. People walk away from them.”

Start your unlimited Newsweek trial